Josephine Cochrane

Without her, you’d still be scrubbing dishes by hand.

Josephine Cochrane got married at 19.

She moved to a mansion in Illinois and became a fixture in Chicago’s high society.

Her problem? Her servants kept chipping her 17th-century heirloom china.

She first tried washing the dishes herself... painstakingly, carefully... only to realize it was just as frustrating.

That’s when she made up her mind: “If nobody else is going to invent a dishwashing machine,” she said, “I’ll do it myself.”

In 1883, her husband died suddenly.

He left her with just $1,535.59 (about $47k today) and heavy debts.

Now she wasn’t just solving a personal annoyance.

She was inventing something she could sell, something that might save her financially.

Working from a shed behind her house, she began building.

She measured the dishes.

Designed wire racks to hold plates, cups, and saucers in place.

Built a copper boiler.

Added a motor that spun the racks while hot soapy water sprayed up from the bottom.

It was the first dishwasher that used water pressure instead of scrubbers.

With help from a mechanic named George Butters, she brought her prototype to life.

She filed for a patent under the name “J.G. Cochran” on December 31, 1885.

The patent was granted December 28, 1886.

U.S. Patent No. 355,139.

Then came the hard part: convincing people to buy it.

At $75–$100 per machine, most women passed.

Few homes had hot water heaters big enough to support it.

And women, she said, “had not learned to think of their time and comfort as worth money.”

So she pivoted.

She sold to institutions: restaurants, hotels, hospitals.

In 1887, she landed her first deal with the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago.

Then walked alone into the Sherman House lobby and closed an $800 order.

An act considered scandalous for a woman at the time.

In 1893, she showcased her invention at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

Nine of her dishwashers ran full-time in the restaurants at the fair.

She won the prize for “best mechanical construction, durability, and adaptation to its line of work.”

That year, as investor-backed companies collapsed in the Panic of 1893, her orders skyrocketed.

Her company, Garis-Cochran Manufacturing Co., grew fast.

She expanded sales from Mexico to Alaska.

In 1898, she opened her own factory.

The machines were marketed under Cochran's Crescent Washing Machine Company, later bought by Hobart in 1926, and became part of KitchenAid.

By the 1950s, her machine finally made it into homes.

And in 2006, Josephine was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Long overdue.